Air India Dreamliner Grounded in Hong Kong

In yet another Boeing 787 snag, an Air India Dreamliner had to be grounded in Hong Kong (HK) on Monday after the aircraft (VT-ANK) sprang an oil leak.

NEW DELHI: In yet another Boeing 787 snag, an Air India Dreamliner had to be grounded in Hong Kong (HK) on Monday after the aircraft (VT-ANK) sprang an oil leak.

The aircraft was operating on Delhi-HK-Seoul-HK-Delhi route and now 125 Delhi-bound flyers are stuck there, with AI putting them up in expensive hotels. "The passengers will be flown back when engineering clears this aircraft," said an AI official.

This is the second snag in a Dreamliner in as many days. On Saturday, Kolkata-bound passengers had to spend hours at Delhi's IGI Airport inside yet another B-787 that had trouble with its braking assembly. After several hours of repairs yielded no result, this aircraft was grounded and harried flyers were sent to Kolkata in another aircraft.

The constant and unending snags in the Dreamliner — which was grounded globally last year for four months following battery trouble — has now forced AI to keep a couple of these planes as "Christmas trees". "Very frequently when there is a problem with these planes and a spare part is needed, we take the same from our 'Christmas tree' Dreamliners. The B-787 troubles are costing us a lot of money and earning us passenger ire," said a source.

Senior pilots say some international airlines have told Boeing they want delivery of these planes to begin only when the US aircraft major is able to resolve all technical issues that keep affecting this aircraft. "Being the launch customer (after Japan's ANA), AI got among the first Dreamliners built by Boeing. The first planes are also the most troublesome ones as Boeing kept making improvements in subsequent planes. Hence we are facing so many problems," said another official.

What is baffling AI is that the planes keep throwing up new types of problems every now and then. While none of these issues affect safety, they lead to grounding of planes that cause delays and cancellations. As a result, the on time performance from these planes is less than what AI expected from a brand new product.

For instance, the aircraft that got grounded in HK (VT-ANK) had in May suffered a windshield crack minutes after taking off from Frankfurt and had to return to Germany. This was the third windshield crack for this very plane.

AI is seeking compensation from Boeing for three counts of the Dreamliner — the over three-year delay in delivery of the aircraft; grounding of this aircraft for four months last year and for failure to meet "guaranteed performance" standards of fuel consumption as the plane has not proven to be as fuel efficient as it was promised to be and was the deal-clincher for AI placing order for 27 of them.